The present invention relates to a system, a computer program product and a method for detecting the wearing by a patient of a foot ulcer offloading apparatus.
The foot is a priority target in diabetes complications. In effect, foot ulcers in diabetics constitute a genuine public health problem because of the epidemiology of this disease, the severity of the complications, the cost to society and finally the precariousness of the population concerned. Now, the growing number of diabetic patients will have an effect on the complications of diabetes and more particularly on the occurrence of malum perforans pedis.
To solve the problem of the healing or prevention of the occurrence of foot ulcers among diabetic patients, it is known practice to use foot ulcer offloading apparatuses. The offloading of an ulcer can be defined as any measure aiming to eliminate the abnormal points of pressure exerted on the ulcer to facilitate the healing thereof or to prevent the recurrence thereof.
A foot ulcer offloading apparatus can for example take the form of a medical boot specially adapted to offload ulcers. The principle of such an offloading apparatus is to allow the patient to maintain independence with physical activity that is essential to the treatment of the arteriopathy and to the balance of the diabetes while avoiding excessive pressure on the ulcer. Offloading is the treatment which gives the best results in terms of healing rate and time. It reduces the risk of infection and of amputation. Nevertheless, to be effective, the offloading has to be done 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Abandoning this treatment is therefore very risky and the failure of the patient to follow the medical offloading treatment must be detected as early as possible by the practitioner following the patient, in order to possibly adjust the therapeutic patient management strategy.
Now, such offloading apparatuses are generally impractical for use and relatively uncomfortable and/or unsightly. Because of this, a high number of patients do not observe the medical prescription of the permanent wearing of the offloading apparatus, and do not inform their practitioner of this failure to observe the treatment. One of the problems encountered by the practitioners is therefore that of the difficulty of quantifying the amount of time the patient wears the offloading apparatus.
To solve this problem, systems are known for detecting the wearing by a patient of a foot ulcer offloading apparatus. One such system is for example described in the document US 2009/0209830 A1. The detection system comprises an electronic device for example arranged in the sole of an ulcer offloading boot, and a data processing equipment item linked to the electronic device via a communication network. The electronic device comprises a pressure sensor and means for transmitting pressure measurement data, over the communication network to the data processing equipment item. Thus, the wearing or not of the offloading apparatus by the patient can be detected by the data processing equipment item, by comparing the measured pressure values to a predetermined threshold. If a measured pressure value is below the threshold that means that the patient is not wearing the offloading boot.
However, such a detection system exhibits low accuracy because of the method of detection by the comparison of measured pressure values, notably for pressure values that are established around the predetermined threshold. Furthermore, a detection system of this kind does not make it possible to determine the distance covered by the patient provided with his or her ulcer offloading apparatus, nor does it make it possible to accurately quantify the time during which the offloading apparatus is worn by the patient.
There is therefore a real need for a system and a method for detecting the wearing by a patient of a foot ulcer offloading apparatus that mitigates these defects, drawbacks and obstacles of the prior art, in particular for a simple and reliable system that exhibits an improved detection accuracy, while making it possible to determine the distance covered by the patient provided with the offloading apparatus as well as the time spent covering the distance.